Dwti Draig

Dwti Departs – The Blog

Come along and join us on our Dwti journeys. We aim to take the road less travelled, and meander into our new lorry life. 

Click on the links below to see our trips organised by category or by tag, or scroll down to see our trips chronologically. 

adventure (20) Africa (2) arctic ocean (1) Atlas Mountains (3) aurora (2) aurora borealis (1) Baltic Coast (2) barents sea (2) beach (5) Belgium (4) border (1) Border patrol (1) bridge (2) bridges (1) Bruges (2) camping (5) Cathedral (4) desert (4) dipping (11) DIY Solutions (1) dogs (1) drum (1) duolingo (1) Estonia (4) europe (40) family (1) ferries (5) ferries. (1) festival (3) finland (8) Finnish history (1) Finnish lakes (1) fire (1) forest (1) France (2) friends (1) Gelly (1) Germany (2) Grense Jacobselv (1) grief (1) Harbour (2) helsinki (1) hiking (6) history (16) huskies (1) KGB (1) King Oscar 11 (1) lakes (7) lapland (2) Latvia (3) leaks (1) lighthouse (1) mechanics (1) Morocco (12) mountain (1) National Prk (1) nato (1) nature (14) Northern Lights (2) norway (1) Oulu (1) overlander (2) Peru (1) photography (5) planning (1) Poland (3) pre-travel (1) Pre Departure (2) prison (3) Quarry (1) rainbow (1) reindeer (1) road trip (31) Rovaneimi (1) russia (3) rv (2) sahara (2) Santa Claus (1) sauna (2) Scanburger (1) scandinavia (1) skinny dipping (1) Spain (4) Statistics (1) sunset (2) Sweden (1) Tallinn (1) tarifa (2) Tartu (1) travel (52) Urho Kekkonen (1) Vanilosophy (2) walk (1) Walking Tour (1) waves (3) Western Sahara (2) writing (1) WW2 (2) yaks (1) yoga (3)

  • Back to Spain!

    So my last post left you on our final night in Morocco! It’s been a while!  Our ferry journey from Morocco was smooth, even if it was delayed. We were kept entertained by watching the huge lorries board any one of the four ramps onto the ferry, sometimes driving…

  • The Catch Up Post!

    How do I even begin this, considering it is now nearly a month since I updated last, and we are now in a different country, even a different continent! Yes, checking in now from Tarifa in Spain, a mere 1231 miles from where I last posted! Make yourself a…

  • Dakhla and a Sign Too Far!

    Oh Western Sahara, where do I even start? We had a full day and another night in our safety conscious guardian park up near the beach in Foum el Oued, so we went out the next morning to have a walk along the beach. What a pleasant surprise we…

  • Western Sahara And Our Safest Park Up Yet!

    Oh wow, I don’t even know where to start with all that happened yesterday, so I guess I’ll start at the beginning. We left El Ouatia after another stroll into the little town to try and get more meds for me from the pharmacy, but the pharmacy was closed…

  • To The Coast!

    We really hadn’t vibed with Zagora; maybe it was because of the hassle we had had coming in, plus we didn’t like the campsite we stayed in, so we were keen to move on after just one night, but firstly, though, we wanted to pick up some more dates!…

  • Catch Up Time – Moroccan Style!

    As ever I’ve left it ages before catching up with writing my blog, and now it all seems a bit overwhelming! I’m forcing myself to sit down and try and remember exactly what we’ve been up to recently, as it all seems a bit of a blur of sand…

  • Photos from Lyn

    Lyn’s photos with his Canon D5 are so lovely I thought they deserved a blog post of their own! These are super high resolution.

  • A View from The Driving Seat

    A view from the driving seat. (Lyn’s contribution to the blog). It has taken us nearly 5 weeks to get from home to the desert. We wanted to make the trip down (and back) part of the holiday, but apart from driving on the right as we came off…

  • From Mountains to the Desert via an Oasis!

    Our night in the Middle Atlas Mountains was perfect; blissfully quiet in contrast to the night before which had been spent in a campsite listening to dogs bark and donkeys braying all night! We had driven into the town of Midelt, famous for its apples, then taken a track…

  • My Highest Blog to Date!

    I write this from an amazing view, high up in the Atlas mountains, where we parked up overnight. We are 2000m high, flanked by 3000m peaks. It has taken us 5 days to get here, so I thought I’d tell you a bit about our drive south.  Amazingly, we…

  • Chefchaouen- The Blue Pearl

    As we exited the busy port of Tanger Med the road lulled us into a false sense of security, as it was smooth, fast and long. We paid the 28 MAD toll, and somehow, without us really noticing, the road quality and the scenery began to change. A journey…

  • Next Continent Please!

    I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming away from those fabulous beaches, as it was time to be heading to Morocco. We left the park up and headed into Tarifa to drop our waste water, before bumping along some atrocious roads towards Algecriras. Luckily we went quite high…

  • Terrific Tarifa!

    I think I’ve left a little bit of my heart in Andalucia! To be more specific, I fell completely amd utterly in love with the area around Tarifa, which is on the southernmost tip of Spain. The journey down from Seville was bone shakingluy awful on terrible roads, but…

  • South To Seville

    As we drove away from Salamanca we could see the scenery start to change. The empty, rolling vast golden fields of the meseta, or high plateau soon gave way to the low hills of Extramadura. It’s a lot greener and wilder than where we have been so far.  Our…

  • A Sunny Sunday In Salamanca!

    It was with great reluctance I left Frias. I could have quite happily stayed for another few nights, but we needed to start making tracks south.  The journey to our next stop was not too bad at all; a bit of motorway and then gorgeous countryside. We had planned…

  • All the Frias Feels!

    After escaping Le Barrier, we drove inland on some incredibly twisty turny roads to try to delay going on the dreaded peage (toll) roads towards Spain. Yes, they are faster, but also a lot more spendy, especially as a big vehicle. Despite looking at toll calculators we still remained…

  • Bonjour France!

    Hello from a lake in South Western France on day 5 of our trip!  We managed to set off on our journey the day before we actually needed to catch our ferry. We thought we’d make life a bit less stressful for a change, and decided to avoid a…

  • The Last Post

    Here it is; the last post of the holiday, written from the Dutch side of the Dutch/German border. We are sat at an idyllic little campsite. In fact, we think it might be the most perfect little camp site. It is only 80 odd miles from our ferry at…

  • Poland

    We ended up going from one beautiful Czech lake to another beautiful lake; but this one was in Poland and we had to navigate the awful E8 road to get there! The E8 is obviously a main truck route, and is just single carriage way, but boy is it…

  • Czeching in for a smashing time!

    Let’s start with the calm before the storm shall we? That seems like a very good place to start! We left the deserted Allrad field and drove south. We were heading down towards Munich to meet up with Lyn’s ex-boss and friend Manuel. Lyn found us a lovely park…

  • Abenteuer Allrad Show

    It’s time to talk about the giant that is the Allrad & Abenteur show! This is a huge show that happens every year in the town of Bad Kissingen in the centre of Germany, and is a magnet for anyone interested in Overland/4×4 travel. Lyn was desperate to attend,…

  • It’s All Taking a “Toll”!

    And I don’t just mean waking up to find that America has bombed Iran and WW3 maybe just around the corner! I say that in the spirit of writing a blog that is uncomfortably too honest at times. It would be far easier to write a blog in the…

  • Strasbourg

    This holiday was a little bit different for us to our usual travels, as we had no fixed ideas of where we were going to go, other than our start and end point, and a chunk of time in the middle when we visit the Overland show in the…

  • Bored of Borders

    I’ve really got to take a moment to stop and work out where we actually are! Two days ago we left France, and drove back in to Belgium for the night. Yesterday we drove out of Belgium, into Luxembourg, across Luxembourg and then into Germany for the night. We…

  • Un Petit Peu de French Chill

    To be perfectly honest I have no idea what day it is, or how long we have been here for! It was meant to be a short stay, but I fell in love with this place so much I lobbied  (and by that I mean lobbied HARD!) to stay.…

  • Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water!

    I don’t even know where to start with this blog! It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions. Let me rewind to our canalside stopover in Belgium. We’d had a really peaceful second night there and went out for a walk along the canal path to look at the huge boat…

  • Mons

    We woke up after a peaceful nights sleep alongside the canal. The weather wasn’t brilliant so we decided to stay another night where we were. After a leisurely morning we decided to catch the train into the hereby city of Mons, which was only 8 minutes away. Yet again…

  • Bedlam in Belgium

    Today was one of those days where I questioned everything, especially my life choices and my decision to give in to my husband when he nagged me to buy a truck! The day started off reasonably enough, with a leisurely start before we checked out of the park up.…

  • Ghent

    One of the best things about the camping spot we found is that it is only 0.4 miles from Bruges train station, so we were able to visit the lovely city of Ghent. Again this was not to be our first visit as we have visited several times before,…

  • Beautiful Bruges

    After loads of hugs we sadly left the festival, knowing that if our tentative plans for next year come to fruition we will not be there next year. We did the long drive to Harwich and pulled into the port desperate to get ourselves ready for the sailing the…

  • Vanlife Festival 25

    Trip 2 was going to be a 6 week trip built around 2 festivals; the Vanlife Festival in Shrewsbury, and the Allrad & Abenteuer Overlander show in Germany. https://www.abenteuer-allrad.de/en We started our travels with the Shrewsbury show. We had attended last year in our not quite finished Dwti. We…

  • The Between Trips Era

    I am writing this whilst sat at a table on the Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry, looking out at the North sea, en route to our next adventure. Before I dive into our next adventure I should start by rewinding slightly to look back at the time spent at home…

  • The Naked Truth

    We were sad to leave Gdansk but left feeling we had really got to know this lovely city (and its cocktails!) We headed off to one last Polish city before leaving Poland. Poznan ended up being one of those OMG cities! How can a city I’ve barely heard of…

  • Gdansk

    Oh Gdansk! How do I even begin to try and describe this beautiful city? I must admit Gdansk would not have previously ever featured on my Top 100 European Cities to Visit list. It was more a case of, well, we are here, so let’s go! What started off…

  • Stalin World

    Bumped may be the most overused word in my last couple of blog posts, but suffice to say we bumped our way into Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. We managed to squeeze into a campsite in the grounds of a hostel, in a great location; just a few minutes…

  • Prison, Police & Crosses

    Well, today has been interesting! After visiting a prison in the afternoon we didn’t expect a visit from the police in the evening! We travelled to the town of Liepaja, which is on the Baltic Coast and is Latvia’s third biggest city, with a port with centuries of history.…

  • Lyn’s Geeky Time!

    So for this blog post, we go back a week or so, back to Estonia. This is a blog post written by Lyn and his visit to the Estonian Air Museum. Over to Lyn…. I was born in 1965 in the middle of the Cold War and grew up…

  • Riga;Darkness & Beer

    Riga, Riga, Riga. What a capital city! We didn’t spend long enough in this gorgeous place, but the time we did spend here was amazing! Be warned though, what we did was at times quite challenging and harrowing, so this blog post may be slighltly darker than others! The…

  • Going Nuclear!

    We crossed the border into Latvia and immediately hit the most horrendous bumpy road! We bounced along like Skippy for about 8 miles,  sometimes down to about 20 miles an hour on what would be classed an A road in the UK,  until we got to a place we…

  • Narva & Tartu

    It was time to leave Tallinn reluctantly. We had hoped to visit the KGB cells, but they were on winter opening hours, and wouldn’t be open until Wednesday. We drove out of Tallinn through the Lansnamae region. This houses many large blocks of flats on the outskirts of Tallinn.…

  • Tallinn Tales

    Oh Tallinn, you have definitely stolen our hearts! We left our prison quarry site (not a sentence I thought I’d ever write!) after another fabulous swim and headed back to Tallinn. This time we wanted to park up for a few nights and take our time to see this…

  • Hello Estonia!

    Welcome to Estonia, and bloody hell, what a bloody journey to get here! It all started at 7am when the alarm woke us after a bad night’s sleep. Lyn tossed and turned, and I had a bad back and toothache in my legs after yesterday’s trip around Helsinki. It…

  • Back on the Road

    Finally! After a week of staying put so my back could heal we have finally moved on and are back on the road, and it sure feels good. Looking back, it all seems a bit of a blur. The days seemed to drag, but I also lost track of…

  • The Road to Hell is Paved with Boulders

    Hell is most definitely a path of boulders, as my poor legs can testify to. We had left my idyllic beach and drove for about 2 hours to the Kvarken Archipelago, further down the coast of Finland. It’s an interesting place, especially for geologists. It is where the Baltic…

  • Chubby Bobby and the Carlsberg Day

    We thoroughly enjoyed our 2 nights at Nallikari campsite. Lyn survived his run, and even managed to join me for a 3-mile walk afterwards. Although it was windy, it was a lovely day with beautiful blue skies. We made the most of the weather and headed out. Finland is…

  • Bye Bye Santa!

    We had spent a rough night in our deserted forest spot. It was rough because a phone call from our youngest woke me from a deep sleep at 11.30pm, and then I found it hard to go back to sleep. I was checking the aurora forecast which looked promising,…

  • Busy Doing Nothing

    We absolutely fell in love with our park up on the Barents Sea and ended up staying there for 2 nights. It was a pleasure just to sit in Dwti, warm and cosy from the gale force winds outside. The location and the weather made for a spectacular sight,…

  • Looking East

    There’s something about a border isn’t there? It’s really just an arbitrary line, drawn on a map, often after tense negotiations, or war, and often fought over, but symbolically they are so much more. I don’t know whether it’s just me but there’s something about standing with each foot…

  • Suomesta (About Finland)

    It’s going to be a slow start to the morning as I recover from my lakeside wander at 12.30am. The moon was gorgeous; so full and shining down on the black lake. As I stood there I noticed two little hints of green aurora above me, a tiny suggestion…

  • The Quintessential Finnish Experience

    We slept well in Santa’s Village; there was no visit from the Big Man overnight, maybe we have not been good enough? There were no sound of hooves overhead on our roof, and no Elvish giggles outside. Undeterred we went in search of Santa, only to be deterred by…

  • 66 32 35

    At 6pm last Saturday, we eventually got Dwti started to make the long journey north to the Arctic Circle. Exactly 1 week later, at 6pm Saturday we crossed the border from Sweden to Finland. 2 Hours later we arrived at the Arctic Circle. We would have made it here…

  • Kaos In So Many Ways

    As I write this I am laying propped up on my bed on the daytime ferry sailing from Travemunde in Germany to Malmo in Sweden. It’s an 8 hour journey so we booked a cabin so we can nap and shower. We also booked the buffet meal plan option,…

  • Letting Go Of Control

    In a previous blog post I wrote about letting go of perfect. This week has been even harder, as I’ve had to learn to let go of control, and this is something I am definitely not very good at! By now we should be in Sweden. Instead, I am…

  • The Missing Link

    As I look around the house at the moment, I really despair. There is clutter everywhere, and by clutter I mean truck stuff. My conservatory is full of wood and tools. My hallway has large pieces of wood. My bedroom has a bag full of my clothes ready to…

  • Letting Go Of Perfect!

    I had that dream. You know the one? The dream of heading off into the sunset on our first trip away in Dwti, all organised and sorted? Smugly looking around our completed truck, nodding with appreciation at how well we’ve done.  Yeah, right! That’s not going to happen like…

  • Decisions, decisions…

    So we eventually got around to actually sitting down and starting to plan our trip. Exciting times, right? Only it proved to be harder than we expected.  It was not made any easier by not having any preconceived ideas other than we want to go via the Harwich –…

  • Vanlife Festival 2024

    Imagine a festival in Shrewsbury full of like minded people who love to come together for a weekend to celebrate ways of travelling. This was the pitch Lyn gave me to try to convince me that this should be our unfinished Dwti’s maiden voyage. If truth be told, I…